Leader of Japan crime group pleads guilty to conspiring to traffic nuclear materials
NEW YORK– The alleged leader of a Japan-based crime syndicate pleaded guilty Wednesday to charges that he conspired to traffic uranium and plutonium from Myanmar in the belief that Iran would use it for nuclear weapons.
Takeshi Ebisawa, 60, of Japan, has entered a plea in Manhattan federal court to weapons and narcotics trafficking charges, which carry a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years in prison and the possibility of life behind bars. The verdict was set for April 9.
Prosecutors say Ebisawa was unaware he was communicating with a confidential source for the Drug Enforcement Administration in 2021 and 2022, along with the source’s associate posing as an Iranian general. Ebisawa was arrested in April 2022 in Manhattan during a DEA sting.
DEA Administrator Anne Milgram said in a news release that the prosecution has demonstrated the DEA’s “unparalleled ability to dismantle the world’s most dangerous criminal networks.”
She said the investigation “exposed the shocking depths of international organized crime, from trafficking in nuclear materials to fueling narcotics trafficking and arming violent insurgents.”
Acting U.S. Attorney Edward Y. Kim said Ebisawa admitted at his plea that he had “blatantly trafficked nuclear materials, including nuclear weapons-grade plutonium, from Burma.”
“At the same time, he worked to ship massive quantities of heroin and methamphetamine to the United States in exchange for heavy weaponry, such as surface-to-air missiles, for use on the battlefields in Myanmar,” he added.
According to court papers, Ebisawa told the DEA’s confidential source in 2020 that he had access to a large amount of nuclear material that he wanted to sell. To support his claim, he sent the source photographs showing rock-like substances with Geiger counters measuring the radiation, claiming they contained thorium and uranium, the papers said.
The nuclear material came from an unknown leader of an “ethnic insurgent group” in Myanmar that had been mining uranium in the country, prosecutors said. Ebisawa had proposed that the leader sell uranium through him to finance an arms purchase from the general, court documents allege.
Prosecutors said samples of the alleged nuclear material were obtained and a US federal laboratory found that they contained uranium, thorium and plutonium, and that the “isotope composition of the plutonium” was weapons grade, meaning enough of it would be suitable for use into a nuclear weapon.
An email seeking comment was sent to Ebisawa’s lawyers.